Thrifty!

September 23rd, 2010

This weekend I was trolling trusty old Craigslist looking for things for some designy projects…and well, for the master bedroom too…and spotted two well priced items needing a good home. Like I need another chair or coffee table, but sometimes when that bargain siren calls I just can’t resist shooting off a quick email.

Monday evening I took a Craigslist themed road trip out to San Diego (which is only about an hour from the house) to pick up a vintage Danish coffee table and a gray Eames side shell chair. Both need a little bit of oily love, but are otherwise in really beautiful shape. On the way out, I hit up my thrifty route and found a little piece of pottery and a vintage gold lumpy horseshoe ring. Not the most exciting things but still pleasant additions.

After I visited the sweet Craigslist sellers and starting heading back home, I stopped by Ikea to check out some of the new sofas and other recent additions and ended up grabbing a blanket. It’s the Vilmie Rund and at $12.99 a total steal. I love it.

My life is oh so very glamorous. Maybe I can regal you of the tales of eating a hot dog and putting gas in the car. Not that those things happened at the same place or at the same time…

In other news, come visit me on Thursday over at Life of an Architect, where I continue to blather about things I buy. Well, more accurately, things I bought.

Porch…cont.

September 21st, 2010

Wow. You guys have some opinions on porch paint.

Awesome.

To be fair, I thought it might be prudent to show some daytime images to give context to the twilight photos. At dusk the gray looks much darker, but during high noon it bleaches out a bit. I shot some pics real quick like (sorry for the deep shadows, this is probably the worst time to take pictures).

The porch and stairs seem really dark but those are just shadows, don’t let them fool you! In real life it’s more like a darkish mid-tone warm gray.

There isn’t a second coat since we were still debating on what to do. We lived with it yesterday and now today and I think…I like it. Maybe I did have color shock.

Yikes. It really needs a couple more coats. Check out those kitty prints.

Some voiced concerns were:

Heat ||  That cement is getting hot no matter what. Try walking on the back cement porch during noon and your bare feet will hurt. We just know to wear shoes during the summer.

Darkness || There is plenty of light on the porch at night, tripping won’t be an issue. When we landscape we will be adding a pathway and lighting which will help out as well.

Dirt || Yeah, I agree. It’s going to get dirty. No matter what color it is it’s going to get filthy. Mostly from cats walking on it instead of people since our friends and neighbors tend to come to the back entrance to stop by. This is a habit I need to break with unexpected visitors. Sometimes you don’t want people pepping through your back windows, because, say your blogging without pants on or something. Not that I would know anything about that.

The dirt issue will also be helped by landscaping. When our driveway was all dirt, everything was CONSTANTLY covered in a layer of filth. Since we graveled it, that issue is so much better. Now we just have pines needles everywhere from the neighbors gigantor stupid monster tree.

I think I’m going to paint out the rest of the porch with “Intellectual”. I mean, come on, it’s the smart move right? Don’t worry I just punched myself in the face.

BOY 1. ME 0.

You win this time sucker. Stop gloating and go paint the second coat.

Porch Painting

September 20th, 2010

After running around all weekend, entertaining guests and working on some killer new design projects (like this one!) by Sunday afternoon I was pretty pumped to prep and paint the porch in wickedly hot 95° plus temperatures. Pysch! Seriously, I wasn’t pumped at all.

Sometimes we have to do things even though we don’t want to (is that what the psychiatrist lady said to bratty little Sally on Mad Men? Which was AWESOME, BTW). Or maybe it came down to the recently purchased paint sitting on the porch for a week mocking me with our inefficiency.

The cool looking red robot? That’s a power washer. Best thing ever.

The ugly maroon paint? That’s about thirty years of ugly paint layers on the cement. Why couldn’t the P.O.’s just leave the cement alone? Jerks.

Check out my caulk. We caulked a bunch of cracks and holes and all the edging around the house. The boy swears by caulk and loves to prep everything with it because it totally works miracles. Caulk makes painted areas look a ton cleaner since it fills the gap between two unlike surfaces – which are usually riddled with cracks and weirdness.

Check out all that caulk!

We also scraped and sanded all the areas where the paint was flaking or scratched up. That was awesome fun.

So…

I gave up one important decision to The Boy. Of course, if you haven’t inferred this yet, I’m a bit of a design nazi when it comes to the homestead. That was always sort of my gig in the partnership. But The Boy has been going on and on and on about what color he wanted for the front porch. He wanted something dark, something to break things up, some color. My immediate reaction was CRAP, those are the three things I’m trying to avoid. I want light, lots of cohesion and a neutral backdrop for landscaping.

While we were painting his choice of color, he was like “You are going to put this on your blog and blame me if it goes bad.” Yeah, totally. Duh.

I mean really, he drinks tall boys of Bud Light (check out the photo evidence). This dudes choices are a bit suspect. I mean come on, he’s been with me for over eight years now and I’m a nightmare. So, like I said – suspect.

He picked Behr’s “Intellectual”. I kind of want to make clear why we always use Behr. It’s not because I love it, in fact I think it’s super crappy, but there is no Benjamin Moore or good paint within a fifty mile radius of the house and Home Depot is pretty much our main source for everything. Not a lot of demand in Hemet for the classier things, so we make due with the options available and the price is always right.

Anyhow, it was super hot and the paint was drying too quickly, so we had to wait till the sun went down to try and finish the first coat at dusk. We didn’t finish painting everything, but from what I’m seeing so far my big main concerns might have come to fruition.

I know it reads a bit darker because the sun was down, but that is DARK gray. Really dark. Like, looks like a battleship or a shark, dark.

We aren’t done obviously, that whole white bit of the planter will be painted out dark as well. I’m trying to imagine it with tons of Mexican Feathergrass billowing out of the planter and the landscape softening things up a bit…try imagining that too. I think I like it, but still feel a bit worried.

My question for you is this: Did The Boy do good? Or do I need to do the second coat in a shade similar to the roof?